“I’ve already told you,” Derek said. “I’m building the venue myself.”
Emma blushed. “I told you. You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s always been my dream. Martha’s Vineyard is the perfect place to build a luxury place like that. A place for weddings and parties. A place for families to gather together for some of the most joyous times of their lives. I bought the property months ago, and we’re hoping to break ground as early as February, depending on the weather.”
Emma’s eyes warmed. “You really have had those designs for the place drawn-up for years.”
“Your mom had a hand in parts of it. She had an eye for design,” Derek replied. “I always told her she should have been an architect. She was just that good.” He finished, even as, again, his heart told him a dark tale. It’s too late for that kind of talk.
“Anyway. That’s about all I’ve got going on my side,” Derek said.
“Sounds like an awful lot,” Emma said. She furrowed her brow and then added, “Have you met anyone interesting on the island? Any friends or...”
Derek shifted in his chair. He felt like a child who’d had a bad day at school. “I don’t know. Everyone’s really friendly. I’m just an old guy on the island. I’ve just been so busy running around, trying to make sure we can start building soon. It’s a really family-oriented community, so I’m sure they all see me as the outsider who doesn’t belong there.”
“Come on, Dad. You’re old, but you’re not that old and I’m sure they don’t see you as an outsider,” Emma said.
“Gee. Thanks.”
“You know I’m teasing you. You’re forty-five years old. I just read somewhere that forty is the new thirty.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” Derek smirked and then rolled his eyes.
“I just don’t want you to be lonely on that island by yourself,” Emma admitted. She seemed insistent. “It’s been a year since Mom...”
“I know.” It had been the most monstrous kind of Christmas. The kind of Christmas that felt terrible and dark. Neither Derek nor Emma had been able to comprehend the happiness on other people’s faces. They hadn’t bothered to decorate the house or cook anything worthwhile. They’d eaten a great deal of Chinese food and struggled to make it through alive.
“I’m not lonely, Bug. I feel good out there. Like I said—all that peace.”
“Right. Peace.” Emma said, repeating his words even though they sounded doubtful.
At that moment, Emma’s fiancé burst through the door of the coffee shop. Derek’s heart dropped into his belly. He wasn’t sure what it was about this guy, but he always struggled to smile around him. Maybe it was all up to the fact that, heck, he was only human. He didn’t want his little girl to grow up. Who did?
“There he is. The man of the hour,” Will said as he approached.
“Afternoon, Will,” Derek said, greeting his soon to be son-in-law. He stood and shook Will’s hand. It was the least he could do. The guy made his daughter happy, didn’t he?
Still, Derek hadn’t known that Will planned to join them so soon in the day. He’d wanted more time with Emma by himself.
“How was the drive?” Will asked.
“Not bad. It flew by.”
“Good to hear.”
Was this all Derek and Will had to say to one another? Derek tried to run through the memories he had between himself and Angela’s father. He supposed it had been similarly awkward. That whole, Yep. Me and your daughter. We’re...together.
He needed to give the guy more slack.
They drank their coffees together and chatted about Will’s new internship. Like Derek, Will was something of a master in business; already, he had started up a career on Wall Street, and apparently, had “more money than he knew what to do with.” Derek tried to convince himself that it was good that Will was so business-minded and driven. Any other father might have appreciated this.
But his daughter? Didn’t she want something more than a money-obsessed Wall Street guy?
It didn’t matter.
After they finished their coffees, they walked for a long while through Central Park. Three or four times, Will dropped off the path to take a call from work. During the third time, Emma whispered, “I don’t know how he handles all he does. The stress would drive me insane. Granted, I still don’t know what I want to do after college. Grad school freaks me out. But so does the workforce.”
“I remember that time. It’s a scary one,” Derek affirmed. “You don’t know which direction to look. It all seems so dark.”
Emma nodded and drew her teeth over her lower lip. Her eyes seemed to say something that Derek couldn’t fully translate.
“At least Will seems to have some idea of what he wants,” she said. “He’ll help me along my path.”
Derek felt immediately somber. “Just make sure that wherever guidance he gives you, that it’s a path you actually want to take.”
That night, Will made them reservations at a favorite steak place near the park. Derek had only been there once, with an old friend he hadn’t spoken to in maybe fifteen years. The place had been completely redesigned to suit a different kind of customer base. Once at the table, Will ordered an expensive bottle of Pinot Noir that cost a little over one hundred dollars.
“I had this on a business trip to France,” Will explained as the waiter poured them each a portion. “It’s an exquisite wine, I swear. I keep telling Emma that we have to go over there after she graduates from college this next year.”
“And after the wedding,” Derek affirmed.
“That’s right.” Will’s eyes looked suddenly glazed. “Emma keeps telling me you’re building that dream venue.”
“Yes, it should be ready in time for the end of summer,” Derek said, as he held the stem of his glass up to the light and swirled the liquid inside.
“Perfect. Honeymoon in France after that, huh, babe?” Will said.
There was something off about them. Derek felt it all through dinner. The air felt strangely sinister, as though they were on the brink of entering an argument or had only just gotten over one. He watched as Will tried to place his hand over Emma’s thigh, only to have her remove it hurriedly.
What was going on with those two?
Hours later, when Derek took his leave from them to head back to the hotel he had booked (as he’d decided that he just couldn’t bear to be at the apartment all night alone), he heard the first of another fight between them.
“I don’t know why you have to act like that, William,” Emma whispered. “In front of my dad. Really!”
“Don’t pretend you don’t love it,” Will spat back.
Derek hung his head later at the hotel while Emma and Will’s words ensnared in the back of his mind. Was it possible that Will really didn’t make Emma happy, the way he had prayed the young man did? Was it possible that this was all a huge mistake?
It didn’t matter. Derek knew that. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say to change Emma’s mind. She would do whatever she pleased, regardless.
He just hoped she wasn’t only marrying the guy because she was so confused and lonely in the wake of her mother’s death. People had done crazier things as a result of grief. Maybe he was an example of that.
Chapter Ten
“I mean, this Thatcher guy can’t just do that, right? He can’t just kick you out.” Mila swept her fingers through Jennifer’s hair as she towered above her, hyper-focused on Jennifer’s face. Her work as an esthetician had saved all of them over the previous few years; she was masterful in the art of youthfulness, health, and vitality.
“I don’t know. The letter says he purchased the property that the bakery sits on all the way back in the summertime,” Jennifer affirmed. “Amelia is doing all she can to figure out if he’s done anything illegal in the process. Like, it’s possible that he wasn’t completely honest about what he planned to do with the property when the initial paperwork was drawn up—”
<
br /> “Ah. That he alluded to maybe keeping the bakery and the other businesses running?” Mila furrowed her brow, then righted it again. “I have to stop doing that. All this frowning. All the work in the world can’t save a perpetual frowner.”
“Come on. You’re beautiful.”
“It’s just because I stand here at this salon all day long and listen to gossip,” Mila said with a laugh. “I swear, this island is up to its ears in drama.”
“And you really do hear all of it from here,” one of Mila’s employees, Evelyn, said toward the other side of the clinic.
“Anyway. What’s going to happen if you can’t find a way out of this?” Mila asked. She stepped back and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “I mean, you can’t give up the bakery. Not to anyone. It was started by your great grandmother for God’s Sake!”
“I know. This is exactly what I told Amelia,” Jennifer said. She groaned and pressed two fingers to her temple and rubbed gently in circular motions.
Mila studied Jennifer’s face for a long moment. “Why don’t we suit you up with a better moisturizer today? I can see it. The stress of all this work is getting to you.”
Jennifer let her shoulders drop forward. “Is it really that obvious?” She scrambled to throw everything together: her work at the social media office alongside her long hours at the bakery alongside her multiple hours at her parents’ house, all to ensure her mother was properly cared for. They’d hired a nurse, of course, but Jennifer was anxious about it and wanted to make sure everything was done right. Michelle had called her a “busy body” for this reason. She’d always had to oversee everything, even when she’d been a kid.
“It’s only obvious to me,” Mila told her as she studied the various ointments and serums and creams she had stacked in a case toward the far end of the room. “And we all need a little extra help around the holidays. All that cold air and all that family stress.”
As Jennifer loaded the various creams and serums into her purse, she thought back to the weeks after Mila’s husband had passed away. Through that time, Mila had committed herself wholly to various facials and massages and “self-care” treatments. Through it all, she’d worn an expression of terror. “Nothing helps,” she’d whispered to Jennifer once, a full month after Peter’s passing. “But my skin has never been better.”
After Jennifer’s appointment with her favorite esthetician, she convinced Mila to leave the clinic and go for a walk through downtown with her. She had staff that would hold the fort for her. It was early yet, but the clouds were thick overhead, heavy with snow, and the light was ghoulish and strange. Luckily, the Christmas lights had cast everything in a holiday-sheen.
“What should I get the twins this year?” Mila marveled as they paused at an elaborately-decorated Christmas window of a nearby shop. “I swear, the older they get, the less I feel I know them at all.”
Jennifer’s relationship with Nick was one she was grateful for. They didn’t have the messy fights that the other women had with their children. Jennifer had long-suspected it was because Nicholas was the end-result of so much pain. Beyond that, she’d basically been a kid when he’d been born.
“It’s so hard to say,” Jennifer said to Mila. “I’m sure Isabelle won’t mind new clothes?”
“She always wants new clothes,” Mila agreed. “And Zane, well. He’s a little more bookish. To tell you the truth, I’ve had my eye on this antique typewriter over at that little antiquary in Oak Bluffs.”
“Oh, I love that place,” Jennifer said. “That’s a fantastic present.”
“Eighteen years old,” Mila marveled. “I can’t believe how fast time flies. Peter has already missed so much. The heaviness and weight of it—it’s still really hard, especially this time of the year.”
Jennifer squeezed her dear friend’s hand. Snow began to flutter around them. There was nothing to be said about all the ghosts they missed the most. There was nothing to fix all the terrible things that had happened to them over the years. All they could do was to continue on with their journey together. Side-by-side.
After they investigated a few more stores, Mila’s suggestion surprised her.
“Why don’t you just go up to him and give him a piece of your mind?”
Jennifer arched her brow. “I’m sorry. What are you talking about?”
Mila chuckled. “The guy who’s going to tear down your bakery.”
“I don’t think we live in that kind of world,” Jennifer said.
Mila shrugged. “Maybe we don’t. But it makes me excited to think about. It’s definitely the kind of thing Michelle would have done, don’t you think? Just storm up there. Point her finger in his face. That kind of thing.”
“She was always up for something like that,” Jennifer said. “And I was always somewhere behind her saying, ‘Michelle! What are you doing!’”
But sometimes, it really got her in trouble. Jennifer remembered the long afternoons, outside the door of the school, waiting with Joel for Michelle to serve her “sentence” in after-school detention. The memory of it flung a smile across her face.
“You know what? I think I might do just that.”
Mila matched her smile. “You promise you’ll come over after and tell me all about it?”
“If he doesn’t murder me in cold blood,” Jennifer grinned as she thought about the encounter in her mind.
Mila laughed. “You are certainly hot enough to be murdered. I’ll give you that.”
Jennifer burned with an impossible amount of adrenaline. Her hands clenched in fists, she marched directly toward Amelia’s office and appeared outside the door in a huff. Amelia spotted her through the window, removed her glasses, and hollered for her to enter.
“Hey!” Jennifer said. She struggled to make her voice sound flat, normal. “What’s up?”
Amelia sighed. “I was just going over the letter you showed me again.”
“No hope?”
“My only suggestion is to threaten to sue,” Amelia said. She scrunched her nose with doubt. “I think he’ll see right through it. He’ll know we’re just trying to dig our heels in. He’s the big bad wolf, and he can blow us all down along with the bakery if he wants to.”
“Hmm.” Jennifer latched her hands behind her back and paced. The snow from her shoes dropped onto the hardwood and melted so that a slick line formed. “If that’s our only option, I guess I have to take it. Can you draw me up something? An official-looking letter or something?”
Amelia arched her brow. “What do you mean?”
“Just—” Jennifer didn’t want to explain her reckless plan to storm up the steps of Derek Thatcher’s office and tell him her plan to sue. Even when she described the story to herself, it sounded half-baked and strange. “Just, whatever you can type up in that official-business-lingo you know so well.”
“You really think I have some kind of business superpower, don’t you?” Amelia said with a laugh.
“I have to assume you do,” Jennifer said as she stretched her arms out on either side in the immaculate office. “You certainly went places with your career that none of us even dreamed of.”
The flattery worked like a charm, even though Jennifer meant every word. Hurriedly, Amelia typed up a letter of intent to sue, printed it off and then put her official stamp at the bottom. With soft ease, she slipped the paper into a manilla envelope and passed it over the desk to Jennifer.
“Godspeed,” Amelia said, her eyes glittering malevolently. “Whatever it is you’re up to, you look happier than you have in the last few weeks.”
“Have to keep this life interesting, don’t we?” Jennifer said. “Even when the world feels like it’s ending.”
Jennifer took a second-glance at the address of Derek Thatcher’s “office,” which had been listed on the original letter she’d received. Then, she blinked up to find that very address before her, the numbers of which were latched to an old-fashioned, dark greenhouse with beautiful dark-blue shutters. She’d
walked past this house any number of times since her youth. She’d never found a reason to mistrust it.
Now, it held the key to her family’s destruction.
But why didn’t Derek Thatcher have an office? Obviously, he had the money for it.
It didn’t matter. She stomped up the sidewalk and appeared before the door. She clenched her fist and then rapped at the wood, hearing the noise of it echo through the inner house. Come on, Michelle. Give me some of your confidence. I need it right about now.
Suddenly, the door opened to reveal a man that Jennifer was surprised to realize she already knew.
It was the handsome man from the coffee shop. The one who she’d felt was vaguely flirty with her on that particularly beautiful Saturday morning. He had broad shoulders, a brash smile, eyes that seemed to know something, and dark hair that spilled over his ears. He looked at her curiously, as that same smile curled up at each corner of his lips.
Jennifer hated to admit that her heart began to drum hard against her ribs.
“Good evening,” he said finally. The silence stretched between them for too long. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Derek Thatcher?” she asked.
He nodded. At this, Jennifer’s nostrils flared. She remembered her purpose. She brought the manilla envelope forward and watched as he accepted it.
“What’s this?” he asked, looking down at it.
“Open it,” Jennifer said. She was grateful that her voice was somber and dark. She didn’t want any of that beautiful flirtation she’d given him previously to appear in her voice just then. He didn’t deserve it.
Derek Thatcher’s smile faltered as he slipped the “official” document from the envelope and held it upright. He clucked his tongue. “I see.”
“If you think you can kick me and my family from the premises of the Frosted Delights Bakery, you have another thing coming,” Jennifer told him haughtily.
“I see,” Derek Thatcher said again. He looked at her curiously, as though he’d never seen a creature quite like her before in his life.
2142 Green Hollow RD (Sisters of Edgartown) Page 8
